In Memoriam—Keith Gallacher

It is often the case with people that we suppose we know more than we do, and in the pangs of grief proclaim our knowledge of a person as though it were complete. This much is human because what else can we do but speak to what we know, and what else are we to make of death than some lesson for the living? To have lived one’s life in such a way as to have taught one’s fellows to improve their own lives is no weak encomium, and I would suggest that this is precisely what Keith Gallacher did for those at Ridgeview who were attentive of him.

Mr. Gallacher came to Ridgeview in 2013, the same year I began my principalship. Being English, he seemed mildly exotic, which piqued the interests of the passersby. He was loquacious, though never in a burdensome or tedious way. The more one learned about his past, about his love of all things equine, of his travels about the world, the more one risked losing themselves in comfortable conversation and forgetting to tend to their work. He loved the students and took a patriarch’s interest in their moral development. He thoroughly believed in Ridgeview’s project and spoke generously about it regardless of whether he was speaking to a parent in the drop-off line, a student in study hall, a colleague in the lobby, or the headmaster he had intercepted in transit. He loved Ridgeview for the reasons we want to be loved. There is no higher compliment that could be paid: that he felt this way, paid us this praise, and took up a position here when he had no need to merely to contribute to our project speaks to the quality of his character.

Mr. Gallacher was the best of the old school. He was a gentleman. This is a powerful and sincere compliment, particularly if our definition of gentleman is not so denuded as to refer to any man, and not so restrictive as to only have an historical connotation. It is, moreover, a concept that most men believe they ought to aspire to or be regarded as. As the historian Philip Mason wrote, “It would be embarrassing, to an Englishman, to say a man has failed to behave as a Christian, perhaps because in that respect we have all failed. But one can say without blushing that a man has failed to behave as a gentleman.” To be called out for failing to behave as a gentleman is an admonishment.

The mainstays of gentlemanly conduct include chivalry, courtesy, and honor. In each interaction I had the privilege of sharing with Mr. Gallacher, these qualities were abundantly evident. He listened carefully, showed regard for his company, and worked intelligently and diligently on behalf of our students. Such conduct is easy to write about; it is harder to perform given the inevitable vagaries and melancholies of life. In 1915, William Makepeace Thackeray wrote in his poem The End of the Play,

Come wealth or want, come good or ill,

   Let young and old accept their part,

And bow before the Awful Will,

   And bear it with an honest heart,

Who misses or who wins the prize.

   Go, lose or conquer as you can;

But if you fail, or if you rise,

   Be each, pray God, a gentleman.

We who carry on this project of human improvement and optimization could do much worse than borrow from Mr. Gallacher’s enthusiasm, affability, and most importantly, his compelling exhibition of good manners. Ridgeview has periodically borrowed Winchester College’s great motto of “Manners Maketh Man,” and similarly, in 1590 Edmund Spenser wrote in his Faerie Queene,

The gentle minde by gentle deeds is knowne;

For a man by nothing is so well bewrayed

As by his manners.

Indeed. The man is gone, but his example endures. Memoria in æterna.  

D. Anderson

Headmaster